Mindprint Envoice MkII

Okay, anybody got any personal 411 on this channel strip? It's priced in the $600 range which puts it in the company of say a Focusrite Voicemaster, Presonus Eureka, Grace 101, etc. It was the 2005 Editor's Choice for channel strip by 'Electronic Musician' magazine, so I assume it's got something going for it...

I saw on another forum where one fellow changed out the standard-issue tube with a Groove Tubes - Mullard re-issue and says the thing is now a beast. I know you guys think the Grace is the bomb, but this comes with a compressor, EQ and of course, tube saturation. According to the EM review, it is capable of clean ("quiet and pristine"), but can also go into the "character" territory.

Anybody know anything first-hand?

Well, I gotta say my faith has been rewarded.

Last night I set up a new project and recorded some scratch vocal tracks at various settings with the En-Voice… everything from just running through the preamp only with the other processes bypassed, to full-tilt processing w/ EQ, compression and saturation, and various combinations in-between… and the conclusion is, it’s all good!

This is a very clean, quiet, rich-sounding machine. Did I say *dead quiet*. And squeaky clean, when running just through the preamp. Plenty of headroom. The compressor especially floats my boat. It can be set for inconspicuous control so that the signal is nice and clean but fat. The EQ gives natural-sounding results, and I liked the setting with compression setting V1 and just a little HF boost in the EQ for “air”. The tube saturation is silky and rich, expensive-sounding.

After I had finished laying the tracks down, just for kicks I inserted the Sonitus Delay in the FX bin and pulled up one of my home-made presets, one that I call “Elvis has left the building”, which basically nails the Sam Phillips/Sun Records/rockabilly “slap back” echo. This just knocked me out! The combination was *perfect* for that sound… big and bad.

Based on my first impressions, I’m gonna like this thang. I only wonder why there isn't more of a buzz about these gems? This blows the doors off of anything by Focusrite that I've demo'ed and to my ears it is every bit as rich as that new Presonus ADL-600 (although that is two channels).